It doesn't matter if you're a first year racer or the defending champion.

The challenging course of the annual Yukon River Quest (YRQ) can wreak havoc on anybody at the best of times, and it's especially tough when Mother Nature decides to get in on the action.

More than 70 teams started the 2006 YRQ on Wednesday and by Thursday evening, 14 of them had scratched. After a full day and night of rain, many of the teams had problems with hypothermia or injury, while some couldn't handle the rough water the rain and wind caused on Lake Laberge.

One of those racers was Whitehorse's Stephen Mooney. As defending champion of the event, Mooney was expected to go through the course at a blistering pace, even though he was back as a soloist after winning the 2005 event in a tandem kayak.

After all, Mooney knows the river just about as well as anyone in the race and he knows how tough the conditions can be. So as word spread that the experienced racer had scratched from the race, flipping his boat a total of five times before Hootalinqua, many people were wondering what went wrong.

'Probably a new kayak and not enough time in it,' he stated, as he sat on a picnic bench in Carmacks Thursday, finally warm and dry. 'And my aggressive paddle stroke and a small rudder. It was a few things.'

Mooney set out on the course in a new Epic kayak, one of the more than half a dozen boats in question at the start of the race. The Epic is built to be faster, which also means easier to tip. During what was a very busy year for Mooney, he acknowledged he didn't have enough time to train as much as he needed to.

He also pointed to the high water and strong chop on Laberge as factors in his troubles.

'I was in the hunt, riding with the top pack when I first flipped, then I got back into the pack on Laberge,' he explained, adding he may be experienced on the river, but his inexperience in riding three-foot swells on the lake was tricky.

'It's tricky for everyone, but the more experience you have with that, the better off you are. That's the difference. Heather and Brandon (Nelson), they know how to ride the waves and how to read them.

'Laberge can throw you some ugliness. It was much worse this year.'

When Mooney would ride a wave on Laberge, his rutter would come straight out of the water. If he would have just 'floated like a log' instead of being aggressive, he could have finished the race, he said. But that's not his style.

When he finally got off the lake, he had flipped so often he needed to borrow some new gear, because he had used everything he had.

'I usually do this race so fast, I don't need that much extra gear,' he smiled. 'If I had more changes of gear, I would have kept going.'

Instead, he pulled ashore at Hootalinqua to start a fire and it was there he realized it was best to just withdraw. He knew there was a chance he would flip again and as a solo kayaker, he would be on his own out on the river, which means it could take a while to get help if he should need it.

He was picked up by the safety boat and brought to Carmacks, but not before lending Jeff Jager another solo kayaker who was feeling the effects of the weather some dry clothes at Big Salmon.

'This is one of the first races I have not finished in my entire life and yeah, that sucks,' stated Mooney. 'But it's a tough race and I'll hold my head up.'

Asked if he would be back next year, Mooney said he will certainly be involved somehow, though probably not as a solo kayaker.

'If someone has a spot in a voyageur canoe, I'm a strong paddler,' he laughed. 'A strong, sturdy voyageur canoe would be great.

'I've always said I want to do it in a voyageur, get a good team together and have some fun.'

As for the fate of his new Epic kayak...

'It's a nice kayak,' said Mooney, who was also sponsored by Epic during last year's, where he and partner Greg McHale used the company's paddles to power them to a win.

'I'm thinking of another race this summer potentially and I might use it there. Could I race an Epic? Yeah, I probably could, but I would have to spend more time in it.'

Scratching from this year's race didn't deter Lisa and Karla McGee either, as the sisters plan on coming back next year to redeem their boat.

The two headed to shore for a pee break Thursday morning, about one mile from Little Salmon, and ended up in a sweeper.

'We got hung up on a tree,' said Karla, who took a branch in the stomach before their kayak flipped.

'We lost so much stuff,' added Lisa. 'The food, the maps, everything flew out. We didn't have any more extra clothes because we had to change on Laberge there was so much rain.'

Thankfully, Lisa and Karla weren't travelling two far away from their dad Dave and brother Scott, who also entered the race as a team. Scott, said Lisa, helped save them and their boat from the water.

Tandem canoers John and David Little also stopped to assist, much to the appreciation of the two young women.

'They stayed with us the whole time, put us in their boat, gave us Jell-O and chocolate bars,' said Karla. 'Another kayaker was going to give us his stove and make us soup.'

It took between two and three hours before the safety boat arrived on scene to rescue the two racers and their boat, because of other race incidents up river.

Grateful for all the help and now dry and safe back in their camper, Karla and Lisa looked back on what they called quite an experience, vowing to return together next year.

'It's a hell of a lot more than a race, that's for sure,' said Karla.

The two sisters, who like Mooney admittedly didn't get enough time training in the boat, still plan on travelling to Dawson with the rest of the family. Scott and Dave, drenched in water and cold, were also forced to scratch following the rescue.

Aside from the 14 teams which scratched, all other teams had made it into Carmacks for the mandatory seven-hour layover by Thursday night.

Leaders Brandon Nelson and David Kelly, Team KayakForCare 2, left Carmacks at 1:30 Thursday afternoon, on a blistering pace, and were expected into Dawson this afternoon. Barring an injury or some other accident, they should easily win the race, as they had a near two hour lead over the second-place boat, the voyageur team Kisseynew which left at 3:15 p.m.

Mooney said he 'absolutely' believes Nelson and Kelly will break the course record of 42 hours and 51 minutes, set by Mooney and McHale in 2005.

'The voyageur record is going to be destroyed,' Mooney added. 'I knew that as soon as the race started.'

Brandon's wife Heather is set to shatter the women's solo kayak record as well. She left Carmacks at 4:30 Thursday afternoon in sixth place overall.

Solo male Carter Johnson is in third place, leaving Carmacks at 3:39 p.m., while EMS, the top tandem canoe, and British Army Team A are tied for fourth. Both left at 3:45.

For a full report on the finish of the Yukon River Quest, see Tuesday's edition of the Star.